There are many peo­ple who oc­cu­py lands which they do not own. In some in­stances, it is state land and in some it is pri­vate land. Every two or three years there are news ar­ti­cles which de­scribe how back­hoes or heavy ma­chin­ery have en­tered in­to ar­eas known as “squat­ting set­tle­ments” and bull­dozed ply homes or force­ful­ly re­moved oc­cu­pants so that the State can reac­quire it’s lands for what­ev­er pur­pos­es they so de­sire.

Those peo­ple would have been forced to load their life pos­ses­sions as small and in­signif­i­cant as they may have ap­peared to the wider pop­u­la­tion and stress about where their fam­i­ly would sleep when night fell.

But the ques­tion that should al­ways be con­sid­ered is, do squat­ters have rights? There is no sim­ple yes or no an­swer; it falls with­in the de­tails of their oc­cu­pa­tion of the land.

In terms of pri­vate land, a squat­ter who has oc­cu­pied for a pe­ri­od ex­ceed­ing 16 years would have ac­quired rights. These rights in law are usu­al­ly re­ferred to as ad­verse pos­ses­sion.

State land, be­ing the lands owned by the Gov­ern­ment, does not car­ry the same time­frame. To ac­quire ad­verse pos­ses­sion rights to State land a per­son must be in oc­cu­pa­tion for a pe­ri­od ex­ceed­ing 30 years.

In de­ter­min­ing whether a pe­ri­od has ac­quired rights to land which would af­ford them the abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue oc­cu­py­ing, the Court will ex­am­ine two as­pects of their oc­cu­pa­tion. The first is the fac­tu­al pos­ses­sion and the sec­ond is the in­ten­tion to pos­sess.

Fac­tu­al pos­ses­sion usu­al­ly is the eas­i­er of the two limbs to prove. A per­son must be able to demon­strate to the Court that they have oc­cu­pied the lands con­tin­u­ous­ly and un­in­ter­rupt­ed for the nec­es­sary time­frame, be­ing ei­ther the 16 or 30 years based on the type of land.

This means that the per­son who is seek­ing to ac­quire the rights would have lived on the lands or con­trolled the lands for the nec­es­sary time­frame with­out hav­ing aban­doned the land or hav­ing left the land and lat­er re­turned.

Ad­verse pos­ses­sion does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that you have on­ly lived on the lands, it can al­so ex­tend it­self to farm­ers or oth­er per­sons who have open­ly cul­ti­vat­ed the lands.

Cul­ti­va­tion does not mean sim­ply plant­i­ng a few co­conut trees or long-term crops and walk­ing away to on­ly check on them every few years. Cul­ti­va­tion means on­go­ing cul­ti­va­tion re­quir­ing reg­u­lar at­ten­dance on the land.

The sec­ond limb be­ing an in­ten­tion to pos­sess is usu­al­ly the limb that comes with ex­tra scruti­ny. An in­ten­tion to pos­sess means that the per­son oc­cu­py­ing the land has en­tered with an in­ten­tion to treat the land as his/her own and ex­clude any oth­er per­son in­clu­sive of the le­gal own­er.

It must be clear that the per­son could not have en­tered the lands and oc­cu­pied based on con­sent from the own­er, or, a lease agree­ment, or a ten­an­cy agree­ment and then sim­ply be­lieved that they have ac­quired rights.

There are in­stances where per­sons could have en­tered lands with con­sent, which, was lat­er re­voked and then ad­verse pos­ses­sion sets in.

There are al­so in­stances where per­sons would have en­tered lands as ten­ants and would have du­ti­ful­ly paid their ten­an­cy rents month­ly or an­nu­al­ly.

At some point the ten­an­cy would have ex­pired, no­tice would have been giv­en to va­cate the lands and the ten­ant opt­ed to con­tin­ue on the lands with­out pay­ing rent or heed­ing the land­lords re­quest to leave. That may be a sit­u­a­tion where a law­ful oc­cu­pa­tion was con­vert­ed to an oc­cu­pa­tion in ad­verse pos­ses­sion. How­ev­er, these cas­es will be de­ter­mined on their own facts, it is not a mat­ter of one size fits all.

It should al­so be not­ed that ad­verse pos­ses­sion can al­so be used in in­stances where more than one per­son owns lands.

For in­stance, there are sev­er­al per­sons that own lands joint­ly with their sib­lings or oth­er rel­a­tives. One own­er may well be liv­ing and oc­cu­py­ing the lands while the oth­er own­ers live else­where or in many cas­es have mi­grat­ed. The peo­ple who are not oc­cu­py­ing may have turned a blind eye to con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ment works, ex­ten­sions, fail­ure to ac­knowl­edge any oth­er per­son’s rights and sim­ply be­lieved as their names were on the deed, they still had equal rights to oth­er own­ers.

The Court has recog­nised that through ad­verse pos­ses­sion, one le­gal own­er can oust an­oth­er le­gal own­er by prov­ing that they have ad­verse­ly pos­sessed the oth­er par­ties’ share.

While ad­verse pos­ses­sion or ‘squat­ters rights’ as we have lo­cal­ly re­ferred to it can be used in Court to ac­quire a le­gal right to oc­cu­py lands, it is not a sit­u­a­tion where­by 16 years of oc­cu­pa­tion or 60 years au­to­mat­i­cal­ly means rights have been se­cured.

The Court must ex­am­ine the man­ner in which you have come to oc­cu­py, your mind­set and the oth­er fac­tors sur­round­ing pos­ses­sion. It means, that while I have at­tempt­ed to sum­marise what squat­ter’s rights are, there is more to be con­sid­ered, and, the nec­es­sary ad­vice should be sought.

Pavi­t­ra Ramharack is Head of Cham­bers at Pavi­t­ra Ramharack At­tor­neys at Law and can be reached at

ramharack_pavi­t­ra@out­look.com